Android game for task-oriented productivity management

• Main Author: Chua, Jensen Jie Xin
• Other Authors: Teo Kian Jin, Jason
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2014
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Computer science and engineering::Software::Software engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/59887
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

This project was collaboration between two Final Year Project students, this report’s author Jensen, and teammate Felicia, in an attempt to study the market requirements for mobile device software applications and understand the needs of users. The aim was to create a task management application that incorporated an element of fun through integrating the management tool with games. Jensen’s responsibility was to gather requirements for building a mobile application for task management, then design and implement the application. Felicia’s responsibility was to setup the server database, and to provide a notification feature for task reminders. Jensen found that many people are supportive of using fun to improve efficiency and work performance, and that many people were still finding and adopting ways to improve time and task management. He proved that the Android market was the most suitable and students were most suitable target audiences, so the application was named Student Buddy. After studying the suggested methods for designing a mobile application, Jensen designed Student Buddy using SQLite as the embedded database, and stored user settings in Shared Preferences. Other information such as game progressions was stored in private files. Basic features for creating, reading, updating and deleting tasks were implemented. The tasks could be viewed in 3 different perspectives, daily, weekly and monthly. To ensure connectivity and improve performance, the application was integrated with the server database that Felicia was tasked to setup. The game feature adapted the popular 4 Pics 1 Word by Lotum GmbH, and was integrated to the points system for tasks completion, to allow users to purchase special powers during gameplay. Testers of Student Buddy welcomed the idea of having games integrated to a task management tool, and liked the auto synchronization capability of the weekly timetable. However, most of them found that the aesthetics of the user interface could be improved. Some recommended that there could be more variety in the selection of games available.